Got up very early on Wednesday to drive to Decatur, trying to get there early enough to avoid the other three million people who would get up to go to work, clogging the highways leading into the City. Had plans to go up to north central GA, near Ball Ground and roam around in Gibbs Gardens.com.P. was to meet us to go on the ramble along garden paths. Due to a bit of miscommunication, people relying on telephones with GPS, arriving on different roads from opposite directions, we originally 'met' in different places. The two of us from the south in actual 'downtown' Ball Ground, and the sister awaiting our arrival in the parking lot of at the entrance of the gardens.
There is one little three block section of 'downtown' in Ball Ground, consisting of several antique/junque stores and three shops filled with rock collections, plus an empty building built in the 1800's as a Masonic Lodge. A plumbing business, a barber shop, and cute-sy little gift shop, a pseudo-french restaurant. Even smaller and less active than Q-town. I got the feeling the rock shops never open, even though the collections have spilled over into neighboring buildings actually taking up several store fronts, all tightly pad-locked, with dusty geodes and arrowheads filling the narrow ledges inside plate-glass windows. Huge open lots, fenced in with stacks and stacks of marble slabs, slices, chunks - apparently all available for sale, except that there is no one there to transact business. Numbers to call posted on doors, but negligible activity.
There must be some locals still trying to help the town survive: at least a dozen scarecrows, made to support a 'competition' were attached to street lights, all with descriptive titles. Sponsored by various individuals, like garden club groups and businesses: ninjas, doctors, plumbers, Floyd and Barney at the barber. We talked to a couple of women sitting on the sidewalk in front of a shop full of 'collectibles - and sure enough: Choppy was right. My mom said that you can go to Atlanta, stand on the street corner (back in the era when there was a huge multi-storied, multi-building Rich's Department Store in the heart of the city), wait thirty minutes and run into someone from Brooks County. One of the two had in-laws who were from Barwick, GA! We talked about driving through south GA when the landscape is covered with fields of cotton, ready for harvesting. And chatted about the Masonic Hall: just across the street, looking like it was a perfect venue for parties, dances, receptions, catered events: beautiful old building, empty, unused, and apparently unsafe. So old it was built before installing wiring and plumbing was routinely included.
F. and I had been up there, back in the spring, anticipating thousands of daffodils in glorious bloom. A bit too late for 'glorious', by the time we could get out ducks in a row, in late April. (Gibbs Gardens is closed from Nov. through the end of February, opening as the early bulbs start to come up.) So, when we finally got there, in the late spring, decided to purchase annual passes, to assure a return trip next spring to see the showy bloomers. In order to be confident of full value received from passes, I'd proposed an additional trip to see fall colors - the hills were beautiful, roadsides adrift in flame red of sumacshurbs and maple trees, brilliant oranges of sweet gum, and bright yellow of hickory foliage.
It was well worth the drive up into the north GA. hills, and that does not even factor in a day spent with my favorite people. We peered in the windows of the rock shops, admired all the amusing scarecrows lining the three block downtown of Ball Ground, had lunch in a local Mexican restaurant (isn't there one in every town?), saw pretty fall leaves, beautiful roses still in bloom, and had a few good laughs. It was a good day!
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